Week 7 - Derivative Works and the Game Players

      Are Otaku animalized database-consumers? Azuma's thesis becomes clear in the second chapter of his book where he clearly explains the difference between the main mode of media consumption from the 1980s and today's. Leaning heavily on Beaudrillard's concept of simulacra and Lyotard's conception of post-modernism (involving the grand narratives and micro-narratives), he says that the loss of grand narratives characterizes the Otaku market of today, a market that he sees as a influential avant-garde movement that allows us to speculate in future consumption behavior within mainstream culture. With the fall of grand narratives, it becomes difficult to differentiate between an original work and a simulacra, a copy or derivative work. Instead of looking for the authorial word, consumers are driven to look for the qualities of the fiction themselves through a database style of consumption focused on characters instead of worlds.

      We can see what this statement implies in the following readings. Coundry also state that Japanese media creation tend to heavily rely on characters. They become creative platforms that allows the work to be disseminated from media to media while being attached to different worldviews and situations. This particular aspect of the character is what also drives derivative media creation within the doujinshi movement: as long as the correct set of affective values in the database set are involved, the gap between fan creation and original content is irrelevant. The affective power is still there and seems to be the determining factor of a works' worth.

Hatsune Miku's database wardrobe: Hatsune's outfits can be broken down to collages of specific affective elements

      The critics of this interpretation of Otaku consumption into pattern of database assemblage can come from different perspectives. For example, can we really see Otaku creations as direct pathways to a database knowledge economy? This statement seems to imply a form of constant rationalization during the act of image consumption while the effects seem to take place prior to analysis at the affective level. Should we rather think of this dynamics as a self-reflective process rather than an outgoing one? Otherwise, how can we explain the diversity of moe and its constant reinvention by fans?

      In contrast to Azuma's reading of Otaku consumers however, Newman's concerns lies not at the sociological effects of game playing in the sense of the re-wiring of creativity patters, but rather on who the gamers are and what can the influence of gaming be on a personal level. Echoing much of the academic concerns over videogames in the 1980s and 1990s, his critique of the literature on gamers focused on violence and gender. An interesting point he brings up is that the audience of the game industry has evolved greatly since the mid-1900s. With the release of the PSX, games gained an audience that allowed them to surpass the movie industry in terms of financial power and mainstream credibility. However, that also brought forward a change in gaming: videogames became less about challenges and more about instant gratification and cinematic experiences. Less about world creations and more about mimicking Hollywood's conventions. While the issue of gender and violence has always partly been associated with videogames, one can ask the question as to what extend this democratization had an impact in the crystallization of the representation of women in games for example. 

Killer is Dead's gigolo mode: the Male Gaze gamified?